That video should be enough to pique your interest in Dylan Thomas. Born 100 years ago yesterday, Thomas rocked the poetry world with his mellifluous voice and furious words, raising as many eyebrows as he did cheers. William Grimes wrote a great piece in the New York Times, in which he describes Thomas’s wild success touring the U.S. in 1950, a current NYC production of his radio play “Under Milk Wood” starring the delicious Welsh actor Michael Sheen (there was a performance of the play in Boston as well, sadly with no Sheen), and an exhibition titled “Dylan Thomas in America.”
I posted this poem in May of 2013, but here it is again, for good measure:
“Do Not Go Gentle…”
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
